Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup Device To Be Tested This Week

For those of you not living under a rock, ocean pollution is a big concern for the environment as it is affecting the marine habitat and keeping things permanently in large parts of the water bodies. The Ocean Cleanup startup, a not-for-profit Dutch company, was established by Boyan Slat, who originally had the idea about cleaning oceans when he was 16 years old and was studying how the oceanic currents worked. After a few years of hard work and painstaking research, the first ocean practical cleanup device is now ready to be deployed 23 Km off from the coast of Netherlands where it will undergo testing to see how effective it is. Here is the video from the Ocean Cleanup team:

So, this hundred meter long barrier segment will be a litmus test to find out the real effectiveness of the company’s cleanup system. Sensors have been deployed over there and the data taken from there will be used to develop an even bigger platform for cleaning up the large areas of the Pacific Ocean where the garbage keeps on accumulating every year due to the current flow. Now Boyan Slat started this idea; they have taken it to a whole new level by making a new innovative collection technique. A team of hydrodynamic engineers worked on this project and came up with this barrier that could collect the trash while remaining on the ocean’s surface in harsh weather and remain effective. The trial in the North Sea will show us the real effectiveness of the system before the device is deployed in the real ocean currents.

The startup has had two main backers, and they are the Dutch government itself and the Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V, a multinational dredging and marine contractor. It will be the first large-scale ocean-based device, and it will stay there for a year while undergoing evaluations! Fingers crossed.